


My Nightmares Are Of My Creation

by chronicAngel



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death, Evil, F/M, Matricide, Murder, Nightmares, POV Third Person, Patricide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-11-28 10:12:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18206996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: She knows as well as Arata does that they only pretend. They both pretend.





	My Nightmares Are Of My Creation

Drow do not sleep, and yet she has night terrors.

When she closes her eyes and tunes out the rest of the world and she is left alone with her thoughts, it terrifies her. Much more than it should, considering they are things she has seen a thousand times over, century old memories she's lived every day since she was eight years old. Some days it does not hit her very hard at all. She snaps her eyes open to the sun on the horizon and the weight of a person who should have died 22 years ago-- who _did_ die 22 years ago-- pressed against her side and there is no sign she has had a night terror at all.

Others, it shakes her to her bones. It shatters her and she does not know how to put the pieces back together properly so they are sadly taped together, an eyesore that her mother never would have allowed in their home, until the next time she falls apart.

She hears his voice first. Always the same. _Wouldn't it feel so good?_ The "it" is never specified, but it is a clear call to action from a god she is not sure she should believe in. She wakes up sick to her stomach but feeling so good. Only she does not wake up to see a dark room and a dead thing that she should not be in love with-- _a dead thing that she is absolutely not in love with_ \-- but to collections of dolls and knives in terrifying harmony. They should not go together, and yet they feel right. She gets up, but she's hardly in control of her body. It doesn't matter. She's always been a puppet.

She puts on a dress of black lace and frill, her mother's favorite of hers, one she wore to a gala she accompanied her parents to just a few weeks ago, and the plague doctor mask her father got for her a few months ago for her eighth birthday. It goes well with the black lace of her dress, a hand-painted mask of black and silver. She wishes she knew where he got it from so she might be able to get another. Perhaps even start yet another collection. Then, she picks up her beloved rat knife, the starter of her collection, and exits her room.

Drow do not sleep, but her parents have a bedroom.

She thinks it is more of a nobility thing than anything. They have an expensive bed with expensive bedding tucked away in a luxurious room only used for trancing because they can afford to. Of the several rooms that fill the several hallways in their large home, _this_ one's sole purpose is for her parents to pretend to sleep in for four hours, just like the one down the hall is for her to pretend to sleep in for four hours. (She tends to "sleep" in. They only need to trance for four hours, but she likes to trance for five or six every night. It is a luxury many drow children cannot partake in. Her whole life can probably be summed up in that one sentence though.)

Like any human couple might, her parents lay in their bed with their eyes closed and their breathing slowed and they truly do _look_ very asleep. She knows, though, that when she creeps closer to her mother's side of the bed, her lilac eyes will snap open and hone in on her. As it stands, she's sure her parents are both aware of her presence. At only eight years old, though, it is not necessarily abnormal for a child her age to sneak into her parents' bedroom at night (even if drow do not necessarily sleep and even if they are not typically the most doting or even vaguely affectionate parents-- after all, it doesn't matter what is typical if  _her_ parents have always been doting and affectionate). She takes a moment to just enjoy the peace.

Vesna lays on her side, facing away from her father. She wears a nightgown of beautiful white silk as though she expects someone to walk in on her in the middle of the night and just stare. She has never thought of how beautiful her mother is before. Her skin is perfectly clear and the same deep purple that hers is as opposed to her father's almost inky black skin and sharply contrasting ghostly white eyes. Her hair, kept long for elegant hairstyles to be worn to galas, is in a simple braid while she lays on it so that she has fewer tangles to brush out by morning. Her own hair is the same way currently, though her hair is nowhere near as long as her mother's. She is thankful to have it out of her face, even as her face is completely covered by the mask.

By the time she collects her focus again to pay attention to the task at hand, her mother's eyes have snapped open. She can see, at this point, her daughter standing at her bedside in a nice dress and a strange mask with a knife in hand. She cannot imagine what Vesna thinks is about to happen.

As she's always been closer to her mother, she feels as though she should free her first. Free her from the shackles of a false goddess and a life spent in the service of that false goddess. Free her from a worthless life filled with material things that will never satisfy her. Free her from the life of a drow noble. Free her from the eyes upon her at all times. The only eyes her mother should have to live under the constant scrutiny of are those of Bhaal. "What are you doing?"

"God is willing me to do this," she responds in the tiniest voice, because she's still a child, a damn _child, only a child_. For a moment she falters. For a moment she doubts herself. Then her mother nods in approval and lays back down without disturbing her father as though Tihomir has not been stirred by their chatter, or by the movement in the bed. She supposes it is possible he somehow hasn't been.

She lifts the knife before she has an opportunity to change her mind and drags it across the skin of her mother's neck, digs it in until she can feel how hard it is to tear the blade through her throat and then watches the life fade from her eyes. Though they were already pale, as all drow's eyes are, they go from the same beautiful lilac that she inherited to the ghostly white of the man entranced beside her.

The white silk of her gown is stained with beautiful red. It drips in rivulets from her neck, from the veins that have been sliced through with the delicate little blade of the rat knife, and pours down into the fabric until it is almost hard to believe that the front of the gown was ever white. The red looks so natural that she can hardly imagine it being any other color even as she was staring at it, practically mesmerized, hardly a few moments ago. She wonders if it will always be like this. _Always as though this will happen again_.

But of course it will. It will because God really is willing her to do this. Her God. Bhaal. The God of murder. She can hardly imagine He will stop.

Her father is the next to die. The next as though there are not only two. The next as though this is only the second in a long line. (And sure, Tihomir Kasun will be the last tonight, but really, is the sentiment that this is only the beginning of some long, unbreakable chain so inaccurate? Certainly, she cannot foresee an end to it, and she will have a very long time indeed to bring an end to it if she desires that. The real question is if she will desire that. Or, perhaps, it is if He will desire that.) A part of her wants to prod him into awareness just so they can have a final moment together. A moment of understanding like that which passed between Vesna and her.

She doesn't need to, it turns out. By the time she has crept around to his side of the bed, her father is snapping his eyes open, sitting up and launching himself at her with a knife in hand. It is not nearly as beautiful or even just as complex as the one she wields. Her beloved rat knife, designed to look like a rat curling its tail around itself, the blade sticking out of the thing's mouth, a present from the very man she intends to kill with it from over three years ago. If she didn't bring her hand up to block it, his knife might have dug right into her shoulder. He might even have killed her with it. As it stands, it just sinks straight through the palm of her off hand.

To a human, she imagines, the thought of murdering one's own child must be as horrifying as the thought of murdering your parent. This person who you have taken care of for their whole life. This person whose life you helped to _create_. To take away the life you have given, the life you have nurtured, must be a truly terrifying thing for a human. It is like planting something in the ground, waiting for it to flower, and then ripping it out of the soil and slicing each individual root with a knife to guarantee it truly withers. The amount of thought that must go into a decision like that is perhaps the most terrifying thing of all.

In drow culture, it is a much less terrifying thing. Many drow parents kill their children just as many drow children murder their parents. It's hardly a horrifying possibility-- it's not even a crime. Most drow parents do not nurture. They do not cultivate life. They simply spit a seed at the ground when eating fruit and perhaps it grows.

She allows herself to squeeze her eyes shut and scream in pain. She allows the tears that bead up in her eyes, a disgusting, human sort of response to pain, to run down her cheeks. She thinks it might just be a form of manipulation. A hope that her father will stop prioritizing his own life over hers when he realizes that he has truly hurt his child. Only she does not hope that. She's no fool.

When he tries to pull the knife out of her hand, she pushes it forward to move with him, allows the both of them to stumble so he falls back onto his bed and she is on top of him. She happily uses it to her advantage. With her only remaining good hand, she plunges her knife as deep into his chest as it will sink when she only has the strength of one arm-- an arm, mind you, that belongs to an eight-year-old child.

He does not die immediately from it. How could he? It is not as though it could sink very far. But he is certainly in just as much pain as she is. Enough that she does not mind pulling her bleeding, throbbing hand away from his knife to grip her own with both hands and bring it down again. And again. And again and again and again and again. She stabs him over and over again, keeps forcing her knife into a new fleshy spot in his chest and pulling it out to do it again until she loses count.

She stabs him enough, even after he is already dead, to leave his chest one large, gaping wound.

It is so bloody and _open_ that she hardly has to dig her fingers in to get a grip on what is left of his heart. The larger struggle is, in fact, pulling it from his chest, but she manages. His blood seeps into her still-open wound, mixing (and really, she's sure she already had plenty of her father in her blood-- after all, how else would she be so heartless to kill her parents and hardly have any regrets) with her own. With blood covering her hands and her dress and most likely her mask, she stands as though to go to the kitchen. Logically, she knows what happens next. She's been there a thousand times. And yet, somehow it still does not feel strange when she stops in the doorway rather than continuing into their large kitchen, cooking up her father's heart, and eating it despite Bhaal not even asking her to. Swearing her loyalty to Him and hoping that consuming her father's heart will prove it. (She has thought several times since then that perhaps she should have carved out her mother's heart. After all, she was always closer to her mother. Then again, that would have ruined a perfectly good doll.)

She glances over her shoulder at her parents' corpses as though she has regrets. She shouldn't. She _doesn't_. She knows that. And yet... She looks back, and her eyes linger on her mother's face for a moment, and she swears she can feel the tears running down her cheeks again as though her father has just stabbed her. (Later, she will take the already-stained gown from her mother's body to apply pressure to her wound so she doesn't bleed out, effectively mixing her blood with both of her parents'.)

Though she knows her mother is dead, it feels as though she stares back at her. She does not have the shallow gaze of a corpse but the reassuring look of Vesna Kasun, the way she looked at her when she was alive. The way she tried to console her when she was upset, something so atypical of drow. They're often so cold-hearted, but not Vesna. She often wonders what her life would have been like if she'd had a normal mother. Normal parents. A normal childhood for a drow.

Her eyes lose focus. Her mother's eyes, in contrast, seem to gain it. They go from glazed over, white like her father's have always been, to stunning lilac. Her mouth moves, her voice lilting. "You made the wrong choice, Morana."

She takes in a sharp, shuddering breath, launching to sit up. She remembers it being distinctly cold when they had set up camp earlier, remembers Myrria complaining about it and Arata cracking some joke about how they were always cold, remembers cracking a little smile and telling herself that it was just to manipulate Arata into _thinking_ that she loved them, to manipulate Arata into _thinking_ that she wasn't using them (nevermind the fact that Arata can't see Morana's mouth when her mask is on). Yet she is covered in sweat. She allows her eyes to scramble around the various things in their tent in the attempt to find an anchor. Find something to latch onto.

They land on her mother's corpse, sitting in the corner, eyes still glazed over, and _Bhaal_ , she can't breathe. She tries, but every small inhale she manages to get immediately leaves her in a panicked exhale. When her eyes scramble around for something else to latch onto, out of the corner of her eye, she swears her mother's corneas are lilac again and Morana immediately snaps her eyes to stare at the corpse once more, to watch her mouth and wait for those damned words to come. _You made the wrong choice, Morana. You made the wrong choice_ _._ And damn it, what choice did she even make?

After a slow few moments, she feels cold arms come to wrap around her. She immediately inches a hand toward where she stores her knife (not her rat knife, but still just as valuable) before she remembers that she is _not_ eight years old and there _should_ be someone else in her room.

"Arata," she wheezes. They shake their head against her back and move their face to press little kisses into the exposed skin of her shoulder and she refuses to admit that it's calming even as she's sure they must be able to see it. She lets her grip on the blanket loosen a little so she is no longer white knuckled (an impressive feat when you're dark purple). "Arata," she breathes again, turning around to face them.

They are still naked. She thinks they would probably always sleep naked if the group's sleeping arrangements always allowed for it. She's not complaining when it gives her an excuse to come into the tent naked and see the way their eyes widen and picture the way they would blush if they were capable of it. She drags her eyes down their ashen skin, stares at their pale chest and the scars that line it until she reaches the blanket, and then she simply leans forward to kiss them.

She thinks that they must be a universally calming presence. After all, how many people can say that they wake up in a tent with their mother's corpse and are so quickly brought down from the ensuing panic? (Not very many, that's for sure!) The number of times her mornings have begun like this, however, is beginning to grow obscene. "I've got you," they breathe. Or, rather, whisper, but extra quietly. Morana would have to conduct more studies to see if Arata actually breathes, and she doesn't think that they'll allow that without a lot of coercion. (Not that she's particularly opposed to coercion...) "You're with me now. If anybody lays a hand on you I'll fucking kill them."

And she believes that. She believes that because she has made them this way. She has watched them murder people without even flinching, has watched the grin grow on their face as a body drops to the ground and blood mixes with gravel, has kissed them while there was blood on their face and viscera between their teeth. It's nothing she hasn't tasted before.

They keep their arms wrapped around her, holding her close, even as neither of them is going to sleep. Drow do not sleep. Drow invented a facsimile of sleep. Necrolyte do not sleep either. She knows as well as Arata does that they only pretend. They both pretend.


End file.
